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MEPs vent fury at Finland over censored documents

Members of the European ­Parliament are demanding an ­explanation from the Finnish government, the current holder of the EU’s rotating presidency, as to why documents given to them about EU meetings with US counter-terrorism officials were censored.

The Parliament’s temporary committee investigating CIA ­activity in Europe has warned that failure fully to co-operate with its requests would be a breach of obligations imposed by the EU treaties.

The documents in question are minutes of meetings between Council of Ministers officials and the US administration on the legal aspects of fighting terrorism, such as when the Geneva conventions on the protection of prisoners should apply. Javier Solana, the EU’s foreign policy chief, attended some of the meetings, which came to light when MEPs from the committee visited Washington DC earlier this year.

The Council allowed the members of the committee access to the documents but only on condition that the documents were kept in a secure place in the Parliament and that they would not be copied or their contents disclosed to the press. MEPs on the committee must request access to the documents and fix a time when, under supervision, they will be allowed to read them.

At the time of releasing the documents the Council said that confidentiality was necessary “at the express wish of the US government”.

But a more complete version of the documents has since been leaked to the MEPs’ committee, bringing into question issues of trust between the Council and the Parliament. The official five-page document given to the Council appears to be a summary of a fuller 19-page brief.

Carlos Coelho, a Portuguese centre-right MEP and chairman of the CIA committee, last week wrote to Erkki Tuomioja, the foreign minister of Finland, complaining about the discrepancy.

“I strongly urge you to provide my committee with full co-operation in handing over all the missing information (minutes or summaries of proceedings) concerning discussions between Council bodies and US representatives,” the letter states.

He added that the document officially sent by the Council “does not reflect all the contacts nor the full scope of what has been really touched upon between European and American interlocutors”.

MEPs on the committee said they were angry at the non-disclosure. “It is a strange way to deal with elected members of Parliament…how can I fulfil my duties if I don’t get the means to do it?” said Cem Özdemir, a German Green MEP and vice-chairman of the committee.

“The Council is protecting the American role in all of this, more strongly than the Americans are protecting themselves,” said Spanish Liberal MEP Ignasi Guardans Cambó.

A spokesman for the Council said that while there was co-operation with the MEPs, the Parliament had no remit in the area of security. But Coelho told European Voice that the Council had a duty to provide information requested by the committee. “If in our final report we have to deal with the co-operation of the institutions we dealt with, we would have to say the Council didn’t co-operate.”